Research: Sound Motifs

Something that we talked about very early on was the use of Sound Motifs namely for the character of Jeffrey to give the audience a foreshadowing sense of danger/mystery and intrigue about him. With this in mind I went about research how sound motifs are used in other characters, analysing their meaning their power and their effectiveness.

The first show that came to mind was Orphan Black (2013-Present) The reason this immediately popped into my head is that the shows premise revolves around the idea and reality of clones. There have been a few that have come and gone, but the series essentially follows five main clones at a time, all of whom are played by the actress Tatiana Maslany.

INTERVIEW: Orphan Black’s music composer Trevor Yuile by Martha

How do you connect to each clone and subsequently, compose a theme or music score that fits their character? Tell us about the creative process or energy that goes into getting it right. 
To answer the first part – it was always part of my plan to help separate the personalities of the clones with particular sounds for each character. The way that works is not in any sort of melodic theme per character – rather, I try to look at it as a texture, palette, or vocabulary for each. And the reason for that is, that way, at least in my mind, if characters cross paths, I wouldn’t be handcuffed to a harmonic tonality, or stuck crossing melodic motifs – I would only have to change the texture or the palette.
http://marthainafewwords.wordpress.com/tag/orphan-black-music/ [Last Accessed 03/06/14]

Of the closes there is one that has a particular distinctive sound motif attached to them; Helena.


 


It would be criminal to go without getting a few words from you about Helena’s theme! How did you create this piece of music? Once again, could you let us into the creative process behind it?

Helena’s theme was born from two ideas I had. The first thing that I had experimented with was taking a few little choir sequences (monophonic) I wrote and slowing them down… not just a little but a lot. I took a 30 second sequence and slowed it down to 2 hours long without changing the original pitch. On top of that, I knew I wanted to approach it like a John Cage piano piece. Those two were the foundation of Helena. and it was good, but it was missing something. It was creepy and angular, dissonant, but wasn’t frightening enough to me. So I have these custom made musical instruments that make really weird sounds…kinda like circuit bent toys. I was playing around with them to try and fit them in, left one running and got up to make a cup of tea. When I came back, I had no idea it was still running. So I pressed record to start working with it, and as soon as I did that was the sound that happened to come out. At that point…the theme was born.

http://marthainafewwords.wordpress.com/tag/orphan-black-music/ [Last Accessed 03/06/14]

Of course there are a number of other popular and well renowned sound motifs from films spanning across the decades. 

 

They all show them the importance and effectively the power that a good sound motif can add to a film. I think I would like to go with something a little more subtle than the ones talked about in this post, as not to exclipse the film itself, but I have a few ideas now generating after doing this research that will allow me to have a much easier time coming up with a particular tone.